


Try Not to Cry

by FreyaOdin



Series: Superfruit Rewind [2]
Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Past Scolex, Platonic Scomiche, Try Not to Cry Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7859554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaOdin/pseuds/FreyaOdin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, maybe we shouldn’t have broken out the wine for this episode. Maybe it was too much to ask Scott to intentionally get all weepy while drinking and then ask for a song recommendation. That boy’s music choices have always been run by his emotions, and melancholy turns to loneliness turns to sappy, melodramatic, over-the-top albeit fucking beautifully sung breakup ballads. Which he then plays on loop for hours at a time until I want to fucking scream. </p><p>Hence our current not-quite-argument.</p><p>For Episode 162: Try Not to Cry Challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try Not to Cry

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure half the fandom had similar thoughts about Scott's song of the day for this episode, as well as Mitch's reaction to it. But here it goes anyway...

 

I really, really should have known this was a bad idea.

I also should have gone first with the song suggestions this week, even if it wasn't our usual pattern. I had this new dance track lined up that's weird and amazing and has chord progressions to die for. But you'll never know what it was because we never got to that part.

"My song of the week is, um," Scott said, voice still raw from Pixar-induced misery. "When Somebody Loved Me."

No, was he kidding me? "Fuck you with that song. I never want to hear that song again."

I'd seriously thought we were done with this. I know Toy Story 2 just reminded him of it, but it's not like we hadn't heard the song a million times in the past few months

My annoyance didn't stop him from singing it. "When somebody loved me..."

"Fucking stop!"

Scott flinched back and then tried to recover his dignity by running a shaking hand through his hair. "Sorry, sorry. I just...I get sad and then I think of other things that make me sad and then, well. Then I'm thinking about how alone I am and I just-ˮ

"No, girl. You have got to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Especially in front of someone who's basically been single for three fucking years now!"

I regretted my words as soon as I said them, feeling like the worst person in the world when Scott's face immediately crumpled back into tears. Really, Mitch? What was wrong with me?

Scott had been amazing when I'd broken up with Travis. And granted, it hadn't taken me as long to get over that as this was taking Scott, but if I'm honest, Scott and Alex had been far more solidly in love for far longer than any relationship I've had. Who was I to judge how long feeling better should take?

In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have broken out the wine for this episode. Maybe it was too much to ask Scott to intentionally get all weepy while drinking and then ask for a song recommendation. That boy's music choices have always been run by his emotions, and melancholy turns to loneliness turns to sappy, melodramatic, over-the-top albeit fucking beautifully sung breakup ballads. Which he then plays on loop for hours at a time until I want to fucking scream.

Hence our current not-quite-argument.

"I'm sorry. You have every right to be sad about it. It's so okay to still be sad about it. I'm so sorry, Scotty." I tried to catch his attention and pull him into a hug, but he was stiff as a board and staring resolutely at the floor. I settled for putting what I hoped was a comforting hand on his knee instead.

"Uh. Do you guys-ˮ Sean, who I'm ashamed to say I'd forgotten existed let alone was still in the room, looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. "I'm going to go find a snack or something, okay? Or like a bottle of tequila. Or insert whatever excuse to leave you two alone seems most appropriate. Um, just let me know when..."

Sean was a relatively new addition to the team, but so far he was an awesome one. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, that'd be perfect, thanks."

He paused the camera and then stood up and headed for the door, closing it behind him, an awkward smile on his face the whole way.

I turned back to Scott, who'd curled his shoulders in as far as his giant frame would allow, hugging his arms around himself. He was still staring at the floor.

Fuck, I was a bad best friend. But I could fix this. Turn on the sass, Mitchell. Scott always respects the sass.

"Okay, so first of all you've got me. So you're not alone because I am fucking amazing."

Scott snorted and rolled his eyes, but at least the corner of one side of his mouth curled up just the tiniest bit.

I'll count that as a successful start.

"Second, you are also amazing. I'm sorry you and Alex didn't work out. I really liked him and he was good for you and I'm sorry everything's weird between the two of you right now. But sweetie, you'll find someone. Hell, boys are lining up around the block to be with you. Girls too, for that matter."

Success number two: getting Scott to wrinkle his nose in quasi-disgust. Yes!

The levity, sadly, didn't last.

"Yeah, well. People may want me, but they either only want me or they want the version of me that's onstage and on YouTube."

Sigh. Solid point. Scott has far more depth and complexity than most people are willing to grant him. They think I'm this deep and mysterious creature with infinitely profound thoughts and well-informed opinions, but they seem to forget that if that's true, I'm going to want to spend most of my time with people who can keep up with me.

Hey, you know who I spend most of my time with?

"The stupidly handsome, talented, slightly ditzy blond dork thing is kind of appealing," I admitted. Which is true. It's endearing as fuck when he's not screwing up my favorite nail file. "You're very good at playing him, Scotty. It's not really their fault they only catch glimpses of the compulsively driven, somewhat insecure, musical fucking genius thing you've also got going on."

"Compulsively driven." Scott's face screwed up with the effort of holding back more tears. "That's what Alex said."

Fuckity fuck fuck. I'm an idiot.

When Alex had first left, after a series of increasingly long fights and tense silences over both stupid and not-so stupid things--metaphorical dirty laundry, literal dirty laundry, incompatible work schedules, divergent ambitions, and a whole shit ton of other stuff I'm sure I know nothing about--Scott had been a fucking wreck. He'd blamed himself not only for things I agree were his fault, but also for things that were just bad luck or bad timing, as well as things that were plainly Alex's fault. Scott was sad and lonely and his too big, too empty bed held too many memories for his broken heart, so he wasn't even getting enough sleep to handle his emotional mess.

At least Alex hadn't been much better off, according to Jake.

Wow. That was really petty of me.

Anyway, Scott had gotten worse once the fandom figured it out. Fuck that stupid monkey. I've always hated that thing.

Once Scott's timeline filled up with collective speculation, I had to pry his phone out of his hands to keep him from sad tweeting and basically having a full out emotional breakdown all over the internet. And that was before the hate had started.

Most Pentaholics either endearingly mourned Scolex or not-so-endearing cheered their apparently vindicated little Scomiche hearts out. Don't get me wrong, the Scomiche shippers are great and they normally amuse the fuck out of Scott and I and even Alex. But timing, people. Timing is important.

Still, we'd been expecting all of that. It was bearable.

But the ones that took it upon themselves to call Allie out for the whole mess? To blame him for breaking Scott's heart with no knowledge of the actual situation? Not okay. The straw that broke Scott's stupidly curved back was the fan that not only stated that Alex had cheated on him as if it was factual, but fucking tagged Alex in the tweet.

The only reason we didn't have to replace Scott's iPhone that night was because Kevin managed to snatch the thing out of his hand a split second before he hurled it at the wall with all his strength.

I'm losing focus. I'd thought it was almost over, that Scott was almost over it and over him. But Scott, despite not being the best actor in the world--don't tell him I said that--is really great at pretending everything is fucking fantastic even when it's not. It's one of the reasons he's such a good front man for Pentatonix and one of the reasons we became friends in the first place as kids; Emo sometimes needs Perky to jolt them out of their preadolescent misery.

But right now, my best friend was having a really, really bad setback. He was jetlagged and a little drunk and we'd purposefully made ourselves sad as fuck.

Sometimes both of us are really shit at forethought. How's that for deep and profound?

But you know what I am actually good at? Acting. And you know who taught me how to act like everything is fucking fantastic when it's most definitely not? Scotty boy, over there.

"Okay, here's what's going to happen," I said, pulling a confident mask on like I was about to serve the camera for my life...which I technically would be if this worked out the way I hoped. I grabbed his closest hand and held it gently in both of mine.

Scott still looked miserable, but at least he was looking at me again.

"We're going to wrap this fucking episode up in record time and let Sean edit it into something that's not a complete disaster." I counted my plans off on his long fingers as I formulated them. Scott just passively let me manipulate him. "Then we're going to curl up and cuddle in one of our ridiculously comfortable new beds. We're going to put on a sad, sad movie that has absolutely nothing to do with broken love affairs, and we're going to drink another bottle of wine and possibly polish off that carton of ice cream in the freezer. With me so far?"

"Uh, sure," Scott said, sounding not at all sure.

"Tomorrow, we're going to sleep in until three and then primp and style and generally make ourselves look like the best ever versions of the drop dead gorgeous queens that we are. We're going to go to that new club you've been wanting to try and we're going to dance with pretty, pretty men and hopefully both get spectacularly laid."

Scott was starting to look like he didn't think I was entirely sane, but at least he was perking up and it's not like him thinking I'm insane is anything new.

"And then the day after that we're going to work off our hangovers by writing the saddest fucking romance song you've ever heard, which you'll probably never release but which you'll secretly add to your playlist of sappy, melodramatic, over-the-top, beautifully sung breakup ballads that drive me absolutely fucking crazy."

Ha! That was totally the start of a smile I could see. A watery one, and small, but still a smile.

"Then we'll do that all again and then again if you need to, and by the time tour starts up again you'll either be so sick of getting over Alex that you'll actually be over him or you'll be able to do the best damn impression ever of being over him until it's actually fucking true. Okay?"

"Um." Scott looked like he had no idea what to say.

I do that to people a lot. I'm kind of proud of it as a life skill.

I gave him another few seconds to parse everything, but patience has never been one of my virtues. I squeezed his hand in both of my own. "Okay?"

"Okay," he said so quietly I could barely hear him. He cleared his throat and then nodded. "Okay," he said again, much louder this time.

"Okay."

I pulled him into a hug, just a short one because now was not the time to let him break down again. Then I called Sean back in. To his credit, he didn't look at all like he'd been hovering outside the room waiting for us to get our emotional shit together.

Sean turned the camera back on and gave us a thumbs up.

I tried not to think about how pathetic we both looked and just concentrated on getting through a salvageable outro. "Well that was...a little more dramatic than I thought."

Scott wiped at his eyes again and grinned for the camera. "Thanks for tuning in. You got to see a more vulnerable..."

Nope, not letting him go there. "I know. Holy shit, was it even entertaining? Or was it just us crying the whole time?"

Scott started full out laughing. That's a win right there.

"Okay, well, I'm" --we are-- "gonna go emotional eat and probably drink more. So..."

We rambled on with excuses for our emotional instability, avoiding the obvious one, and closed out the damn episode. I don't even really remember how. But I have a three day long comfort date that I promised my best friend to get to...

So Goodbye!

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? Feelings? Ideas for one shots based on other episodes?


End file.
